CIRM announced today that its President and CEO, Randy Mills, is soon leaving for a new job as President of the National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match in Minnesota. Update: Dr. Maria Millan, the CIRM Vice President of Therapeutics, will be its leader starting July 1 until a new leader is chosen.

For this kind of position three years is a relatively short tenure so CIRM will need to scramble a bit to keep continuity and momentum as it searches for and ultimately puts in place a new leader. It’s a critical time for CIRM as it and its allies consider big picture strategy for the future, approaches to future funding such as a possible new proposition for state funding (Prop 71 2.0), and how to continue all those exciting clinical trials and research beyond the current period of its funding.

In general, Mills had a big positive impact on CIRM and helped it go to the next level. About the only thing I wasn’t a fan of in terms of his leadership was my perception of his negativity toward the FDA and toward FDA oversight of stem cells, and how that manifested at CIRM during his time there. But good people can strongly disagree on policy. We’ll have to wait and see how the regulatory experiment of stem cell provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act, which Mills may have helped to make possible, will impact regenerative medicine in terms of changes in FDA oversight. It could also impact CIRM too.

Now CIRM’s Board has an exciting, difficult task ahead. Who do they want as their new leader to tackle CIRM’s challenge? What kind of background and future vision? The priorities, leadership skills, and vision of the new leader are likely to together be a major factor in CIRM’s future success. Who are the top possible candidates out there right now? I’m going to do a follow-up, future post on these questions and CIRM’s future.